[High-Speed-CW] High-Speed-CW Digest, Vol 38, Issue 1

[Fabian Kurz]

Hello Bob,

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 04:34:36PM +0000, rgrubic at aol.com wrote:
> "But the Belarussian competitors cannot be compared with "normal" hams,
> or even the other serious competitors at the HST (from Russia,
> Romania) because they do it professionally, and they _only_ practice
> to send code groups. Plain text or QSOs are absolutely not within
> their skill sets."
> 
> Can you please elaborate? Where is Morse code still used professionally?

HST is considered a sport in several former Soviet countries and
enjoys a good reputation and support from their governments. For example
in Belarus, the DOSAAF [1] has a "radiosport" section with subsections
for ARDF and HST [2]. While most of the younger competitors are still
students, some of the trainers are actually doing it as their jobs;
both training the newcomers and taking part in the competitions.

These guys from EW all have a callsign, but most of them can never be
heard on the bands because they are only interested in HST
competitions, and within that they excel in the classic disciplines,
transmission and reception of code groups.

In Russia it is similar, as far as I know a few of the competitors are
also employed as teachers for radiosport, but there are also some
"real hams" among the Russian team, which regularly show up on the
bands (mostly in contests).

73
Fabian DJ1YFK

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSAAF_%28Belarus%29
[2] http://www.dosaaf.gov.by/sport/radiosport/radiotelegraphy/

-- 
Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK          web: http://fkurz.net/            .---.
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